Eevee metals

Support Materials and Textures
1

Hope I’m posting in the correct place:

I am trying to copy an animation - the initial scope was to learn scripting. Now that I am happy with the scripting I am deeply unhappy with my rendering! It is in Eevee. The problem is that the metal rail doesn’t not look metallic, the reflections are horrible and if you look closely at where the key hangs on the rail there is something weird going on. It is like the metal breaks through.

The purple keys image is the effect I wish to emulate. I suppose I should ask, is that possible in Eevee?

Progress so far:
I have tried turning on screen space reflections - the best result so far is to have that switched on for the key but not the metal rail.

I’ve enabled backface culling on everything.

The number of samples does not seem to do as much as I thought it would. In Cycles, with 8 samples, it looks acceptable. With 128 samples in Eevee the problems persist. I’ve 576 frames and only a laptop.

I have tried various blend modes/shadow modes under settings but away from the default it makes things worse. All the lights have contact shadows switched on - that made things better (compared to the very beginning).

The metal rail has a solidify modifier and things get slightly better without it.

I have been surfing youtube tutorials and reading various suggestions and frankly I am now chasing my tail.

The file kills my computer so I have stripped it down to try to work on the actual rendering: that is what I’ve uploaded here.

The animation version can be seen here:

https://www.kapwing.com/videos/62a62915df138700d6c1ef97
![example|590x500](upload://uN

weird result
weird result1400×1132 229 KB

zhb18UJDTdmzJj3l1WZZhr1vE.jpeg)
example
example1310×1110 166 KB

2

Some things to weigh in:

  • Basic question, are you using a Principled BDSF shader node?

  • Is your material roughness at a low value?

  • Do you have an HDRI in your scene?
    And I mean is it actually visible in your render and not just the 3D viewport.

  • You might look into using some normal maps to add extra detail to your material.
    You can even bake your own normal map from a higher poly mesh if you wish to do so.

I don’t see a blend file. Perhaps you mean the video animation file?

3

This is a worst case scenario for Eevee’s screen space reflections. Plus the heavy DOF is also challenging for all screen space effects. No amount of samples will compensate for a lack of screen space buffer data.

I know it’s a significant increase in render time, but cycles is your best bet for this.

1 Like
4

hanger shader
hanger shader3360×2100 794 KB

key shader
key shader3360×2100 752 KB

I’ve uploaded screenshots of the metal pole shader and the keys.

I did have a HDRI to begin with (for the reflections mainly) but as the thing is intended as a loop I found that the reflections at the end of the loop did not quite match those at the beginning. So until I figure that out I have just the normal Background shader and three lights in the scene.

I must admit, I thought I had uploaded the blend file. I just tried again and it is too big which i guess is why! I just deleted half of it so i can upload it now.
key_bare_scene.blend (3.6 MB)
Sorry about that chaps.

5

After another afternoon playing, I fear you (SterlingRoth) are right. I need a faster computer ;-(